http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
FUNNY HOW EVEN IMMIGRANTS who are English-challenged learn to say
"anti-discrimination lawsuit" fast enough.

Three former maids at the Boston Harbor Hotel are suing for what they
imagine to be a violation of their civil rights. The act of injustice?

Asking them to speak English around guests.

The hotel says it encourages employees to use our common lingo so guests
will feel comfortable. (You're walking down a corridor. Are the two maids
conversing in Spanish talking about you?) It might also facilitate
communication for guests who don't know the Espanol for "extra towels."

The maids probably have a good case. We have become a culture of language
entitlement, where it's considered oppressive to ask employees to speak
English or to expect immigrants to learn our language.

Linguistic coddling is a fact of everyday life. When I used the ATM machine
at my new bank last week, the first message that popped up on the screen
was, "Do you wish to continue in English?" (Yes, and I'd like my country to
do the same.) For the 2000 census, 2.9 million questionnaires were printed
in six languages, including Vietnamese, Korean and Tagalog.

A May 30 article in The Washington Times observes, "More and more
immigrants, speaking diverse languages, are demanding that U.S. society deal
with them in their native tongues."

These arrogant demands come with a price tag -- monetary and cultural. It's
estimated the cost of translation services (for courts, schools, hospitals
and other agencies) will grow from $11 billion in 1999 to $20 billion in
2004.

California gives driver's tests in 30 languages (New York in 23). Bilingual
education, celebrated by Education Secretary Richard Riley, is the most
costly form of language pampering. In 1998, Oregon alone spent $56 million
on bilingual programs.

The federal government mandates foreign-language ballots in areas with
large immigrant populations. I don't know what's scarier, giving a driver's
license to someone who can't read road signs ("do not enter") or giving a
license to participate in the democratic process to someone who can't read
the daily newspaper in his community, not to mention the Constitution in the
language in which it was written.

A multiculturalist bureaucracy and pandering politicians are fueling the
trend. Clinton bureaucrats in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
are relentlessly pursuing national-origin discrimination claims against
employers with English policies, even though no federal court has yet
declared speaking another language on the job to be a civil right. The EEOC
will generously make an exception where it considers English essential to
job performance, say air traffic controllers and operating-room nurses.

Vice President Al Gore recently told a Latino audience that while his first
grandchild was "born on the Fourth of July, I hope my next is born on Cinco
de Mayo." Will someone please tell Big Buddha that the latter is the
national holiday of Mexico. It is not, as yet, an American holiday.

Gov. Jorge W. Bush, who carries around a copy of "Spanish for Dummies" (I'm
not making this up) to help him address Hispanic gatherings, has criticized
the official English movement as "only me without taking others into
account."

It's not "me" or "others," but our -- as in our country. English is our
cultural glue and the solvent in the melting pot. For most of our history,
it allowed those from diverse cultures to become Americans, to learn to live
with others who were radically different without wanting to kill them. In
short, it kept the Balkans at bay.

It allowed this nation to take my immigrant grandparents from the Pale of
Settlement (and yours from Italy, Poland or Cuba) and make them part of a
nation where they could communicate with other Americans and identify with
what became their adopted heritage.

If I moved to Mexico, I would feel a moral obligation to learn Spanish
fluently and speak it in public. Not to do so would be to insult my new
country. Immigrants who feel burdened by the requirement to speak English on
the job, or anywhere else, are an affront to the American people.

The fault is as much ours as theirs. When they came here, we should have
told them: Be one of us -- linguistically, culturally and emotionally -- or
begone.